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Game broadcasting doesnt work.

I would like to report that game broadcasting doesnt work on Lan Bridger.
eg, I create a network with Lanbridger, I send the Public file to my friend who lives in a diffrent nabourhood. He connects, I can see him on the connection window as being connected, the program assigns IP address to both of us.

Now: Try to host a lan game on Call of Duty 4, when he navigates to the join game screen, changes the view to "local", he cant see my game there, when he types in my Lan Bridger IP, he is able to connect to my game. Now this isnt really a problem, the problem comes in with Call of Duty 5, when hosting a
CO-OP match, because there isnt any game broadcast he cant see my game lobby, so he cant join my games, its unfortunate but this game doesnt support direct IP connections, technically, the game hasn't started yet in the lobby, only when you click on "Start match" does it create the game, and you cant connect to an already started match of CO-OP.

So basically, my problem is that my games dont broadcast the game through the virtual network that Lan Bridger creates, and with such, nobody can see it in any game they play, I have to connect directly with their IP, this sucks, as I've menstioned, not all games support direct IP connections...

Thanks, I hope you guys can sort this out, as its the only issue preventing me from using the software...

Of course, I could have configuration problem, but I havent changed anything on the program itself, all is left at defaults.

I would like to excuse my english, might be bad to read :P
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  • Soren Dreijer EMPLOYEE
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    Soren Dreijer, Official Rep, replied on June 01, 2009 04:14
    Hi Dominique,

    LAN Bridger was actually designed with broadcast traffic (such as that used by many games) in mind, so if you're having problems with this feature it's really important for us to solve.

    You're mentioning that you've seen this behavior in Call of Duty 4 and 5. Have there been other games where the game server didn't show up in the lobby?

    If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to hear a bit more about your network configuration. How many network adapters are currently installed? You can check it by clicking Start->Run and typing "ncpa.cpl" followed by hitting OK. How many network connections show up in the list?

    In the meantime, we'll try to reproduce the behavior you're seeing.

    Thanks for getting back to us. We really appreciate the feedback so we can improve LAN Bridger.
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  • Dominique
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    Dominique replied on June 01, 2009 14:30
    Sorry for the late reply.

    Ok, I have isolated my test to only me and my friend's PC, only 2 computers are used, mine is the HOST, my friend is the PEER.

    My PC: Vista Home Premium 32-bit, service pack 1 installed. nForce 720i
    Friend's PC: Vista Home Premium 32-bit, service pack 1 installed. nForce 550

    Games tried: Call of Duty 4 and World at War, Dawn of war 2, left 4 dead, Team Fortress 2.

    Why these game? They all use steam to work, but I live in South africa, our telcoms provider ( the only one we have ) Telkom, only allows a certain amount of international bandwidth a month ( with my package, 2gigs ) if we use up our bandwitdh we can only access local content with our internet connections. So no Steam connections when we would like to play games.

    This is where Lan Bridger comes in, even though Steam does not connect internationally anymore, it still allowes offline mode for lanning, this same problem occures with CoD: World at war. It uses an international server to load your online profile, if no connection to the server is available, it goes to offline mode where we can only lan CO-OP mode.

    Note: During all our testing, we swaped around who hosts and who is peer.
    All testing was conducted with no firewall active, including windows firewall etc

    Running "ncpa.cpl" : There are 4 connections shown here.

    Bluetooth Network Connection (Not Connected)
    LAN Bridger Connection (Unidentified Connection)
    Local Area Connection (Unidentified Connection)
    Telkom (Wan miniport PPPoE)
    ______________________

    Telkom is my ISP and internet line provider, its a dsl 512mbps connection, I use the PPPoE connection to connect my computer to the internet.

    The same configuration is found on my friends computer, only one exception, there is no Bluetooth Network Connection.

    We use this type of connection for internet ( called bridging on our routers Telkom WR-105 ), it allows us to directly control the internet connection and avoids the hassles with port forwarding.

    My computer ip range for my Lan network at home: 192.168.1.x => 192.168.1.255
    Subnet: 255.255.255.0

    My friend's ip range at his home is 10.0.0.x => 10.0.0.255
    Subnet: 255.255.255.0

    Lan Bridger: We both install the program with out changing anything from defaults.

    Test 1: I host a network, I use "ipconfig" to determine my external ip. Set up a password and the program creates 2 files in my documents folder.

    VOID.priv_profile
    VOID.pub_profile

    I use a flash stick and copy the file VOID.pub_profile to it.

    We go to my friends house, click on "join network" and locate the file VOID.pub_profile, we enter the password asked later, and his PC connects to my HOST.

    I go back to my house and check Lan Bridger, 1 user is now visible in the window, my friend's user name with an ip underneath it 10.197.215.2 [Peer].
    The window also displayes "Your IP: 10.197.215.1" at the top under the network name VOID.
    Now we try to immedately host a game of call of duty 4, both our games have the latest patch installed (as we both play locally online) we use it as a test first because we know it works when we lan it normally. I host a game of Free-For-All on my PC, my friend goes to the join game option. Changes the network to "local", and nothing is displayed. After clicking on refresh still nothing, so he uses his console and types the command in "/connect 10.197.215.1" and the game connects, he joins my game and we are able to play.

    Of some note aswell: I am able to ping my friend using cmd,

    Pinging 10.197.215.2 with 32 bytes of data:
    Reply from 10.197.215.2: bytes=32 time=151ms TTL=128
    Reply from 10.197.215.2: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=128
    Reply from 10.197.215.2: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=128
    Reply from 10.197.215.2: bytes=32 time=74ms TTL=128

    Ping statistics for 10.197.215.2:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
    Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 74ms, Maximum = 151ms, Average = 93ms

    He is also able to ping my PC.

    Thats the end of my story :) I hope this can help you guys see if something should be checked or changed in my configuration, or of a known issue perhaps.

    I'm not a guru at networking, but I have this feeling in my gut that the Virtual Network from LanBridger doesn't quite bridge the subnets from our local Lan networks, bacause when my friend's brother hosts a game on their local network in their house, they can see each it in the "local" window of CoD4.

    I have to atmit, I'm really excited about your program, MS and hamachi can definately learn from you guys about User Friendliness of you program, its super simple, just this issue I'm having. Broadcasting of games in the lan windows.
     
    happy I’m patient and understanding.
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  • Dominique
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    Dominique replied on June 01, 2009 14:49
    I am able to access my friend's shares over the connection by typing in his PC name : \\FriendsPC\Music
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  • Soren Dreijer EMPLOYEE
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    Soren Dreijer, Official Rep, replied on June 02, 2009 06:04
    Hi Dominique,

    Thanks for all the information about your network configuration. You've put a lot of effort into documenting what you've tried and what has worked/failed and that's greatly appreciated!

    My first guess would be that the problem is due to your PPPoE connection. We haven't tested such a configuration in-house and it might do something to the routing table that LAN Bridger does not take into consideration.

    Would you mind showing me a snapshot of your routing table once you've connected to the Internet and LAN Bridger is running?
    You can do so by going to Start->Run and typing "cmd" followed by hitting OK. Then type 'route print' and paste the entire output here.

    I'm not a guru at networking, but I have this feeling in my gut that the Virtual Network from LanBridger doesn't quite bridge the subnets from our local Lan networks, bacause when my friend's brother hosts a game on their local network in their house, they can see each it in the "local" window of CoD4.

    LAN Bridger *is* correctly bridging the network between you and your friend. Many games use broadcast packets to find game servers on the LAN, and that type of packet is handled differently on the various versions of Windows. As you've already noticed, you can still browse to your friend's computer through Windows Explorer and you can join his game by entering his exact IP address. That's because you're communicating via unicast packets, which have a specific destination host. Broadcast packets, on the other hand, are theoretically supposed to go to anybody on your network, but in reality this isn't the case (especially not on Vista).
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  • Dominique
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    Dominique replied on June 02, 2009 19:20
    Route Print:
    ========================================================
    Interface List
    33...........................Telkom
    24...00 00 fe 67 4d ca ......Echobit Virtual Ethernet Adapter
    14...00 0a 94 12 de 85 ......Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)
    11...00 22 15 3c cc 00 ......NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
    1...........................Software Loopback Interface 1
    15...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2
    21...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft 6to4 Adapter
    16...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
    23...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #3
    22...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #4
    ========================================================IPv4 Route Table
    ========================================================Active Routes:
    Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
    0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 On-link 41.145.177.238 21
    10.231.110.0 255.255.255.0 On-link 10.231.110.2 4501
    10.231.110.2 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.231.110.2 4501
    10.231.110.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.231.110.2 4501
    41.145.177.238 255.255.255.255 On-link 41.145.177.238 276
    127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    127.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 On-link 192.168.1.103 4501
    192.168.1.103 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.103 4501
    192.168.1.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.103 4501
    224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 192.168.1.103 4502
    224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 10.231.110.2 4501
    224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 On-link 41.145.177.238 21
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.103 4501
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.231.110.2 4246
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 41.145.177.238 276
    ========================================================
    Persistent Routes:
    Network Address Netmask Gateway Address Metric
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 1
    ========================================================

    IPv6 Route Table
    ========================================================
    Active Routes:
    If Metric Network Destination Gateway
    21 1125 ::/0 2002:c058:6301::c058:6301
    1 306 ::1/128 On-link
    21 1025 2002::/16 On-link
    21 281 2002:2991:b1ee::2991:b1ee/128
    On-link
    24 276 fe80::/64 On-link
    24 276 fe80::8990:ca98:5939:98b6/128
    On-link
    1 306 ff00::/8 On-link
    24 276 ff00::/8 On-link
    ========================================================
    Persistent Routes:
    None

    Some good news, I used a 3rd PC to setup the Lan Bridger host, its a laptop with Win XP 32-bit, service pack 3. Connecting to it allowed us to see each other's games, the laptop is situated in my home, I connect to my PPPoE interface then host Lan Bridger, me and my friend connect to it with the Public file. Everything connects fine, now we are able to see each other's hosted games in the local panel.

    Now I have this feeling it's a problem remote to my own PC configuration.

    I'll be looking here if you find anything wrong that I should check with my computer, other then that I'll be playing some games with my friends now, at time of writing I'm corrently connected with 4 more people,. all able to see my hosted games.
     
    happy
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  • Soren Dreijer EMPLOYEE
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    Soren Dreijer, Official Rep, replied on June 02, 2009 20:54
    This is your problem:

    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.1.103 4501
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.231.110.2 4246
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 41.145.177.238 276

    Notice how the metric (the last number on each line) on the route for your Internet connection (I've highlighted it in bold) is lower than the LAN Bridger broadcast route (the line above it).

    Fortunately for you, you're on Vista and can run the following command in a command prompt (you must run it as an Administrator):

    netsh interface ip set route 255.255.255.255/32 interface=24 metric=200
    The idea here is to lower the metric value on the LAN Bridger interface to a value that's less than 276 (which is what the broadcast route for your Internet connection currently is). Once you've run this command, you can do another 'route print' to see the effect.

    You might have to play with the values a bit to get it right, but what you want to achieve is to make LAN Bridger's broadcast route the one with the lowest metric.

    Hopefully this will fix your issue. In the meantime, I'll look into why LAN Bridger doesn't configure the routing table correctly for your particular network configuration.
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  • Dominique
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    Dominique replied on June 03, 2009 10:57
    Latest Route Print:

    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 127.0.0.1 4531
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 192.168.3.103 4501
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.102.59.2 4445
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 41.246.199.67 276
    ===========================================================================
    Persistent Routes:
    Network Address Netmask Gateway Address Metric
    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 200
    ===========================================================================

    IPv6 Route Table
    ===========================================================================
    Active Routes:
    If Metric Network Destination Gateway
    21 1125 ::/0 2002:c058:6301::
    1 306 ::1/128 On-link
    21 1025 2002::/16 On-link
    21 281 2002:29f6:c743::29f6:c743/128
    On-link
    1 306 ff00::/8 On-link
    ===========================================================================
    Persistent Routes:
    None

    I only took out the information thats most relevent ( none of the other values changed from my last 'Route Print' , it would seem that running that command changes my Lan Bridger's interface(24) metric to 200, but I doesnt seem to be working ( as far as I can see ) The Persistent Routes table is the only one changed, dunno if this is what you wanted.

    Result: Still the same, no broadcasting.
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  • Soren Dreijer EMPLOYEE
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    Soren Dreijer, Official Rep, replied on June 03, 2009 13:31
    I actually wanted this route to change:

    255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 On-link 10.102.59.2 4445

    Not the persistent one. As you can see above, that route, which is your LAN Bridger broadcast route, still has a higher metric value (4445) than your Internet connection's broadcast route (276). We want to lower the first one or increase the latter. Either way works.

    You can try changing the command I pasted earlier to this:

    netsh interface ip set route 255.255.255.255/32 interface="LAN Bridger Connection" metric=200

    , where the string set after 'Interface=' is the name of the LAN Bridger connection in the Network Connections window (the ncpa.cpl window you went to earlier).

    You can also try passing in the name of your Internet connection (Telkom?) and set the metric to a high value. That might also work.
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